Charity foundation seeks to restore trust after ‘tragedy’

A Canadian charitable foundation headquartered in Winnipeg informed donors Wednesday it has taken action after financial misconduct committed by a senior staff member resulted in the loss of nearly $8 million in donations.

“Abundance Canada has spent the last 18 months living through a tragedy, which we have resolutely addressed, bolstered by our faith, the resolve of our board and staff, and the grace of our affected community stakeholders,” board chair Jennifer Thompson wrote in a note to the organization’s 1,300 fundholders Wednesday.

Abundance Canada — formerly known as the Mennonite Foundation of Canada — learned about the misconduct after the suicide death of Winnipegger Rick Braun-Janzen on Jan. 8, 2024.

Braun-Janzen, 62, was a member of the organization’s leadership team and director of gift planning. He had been with Abundance, a registered public foundation that offers charitable gift planning services, for 27 years.

In a suicide note received by the organization, Abundance learned he had lost $7.9 million of donated money due to unauthorized trading on six donor funds.

Those funds were given by donors across Canada with help from the organization, which enables them to use their capital to support charities during their lives and after death.

Braun-Janzen managed those funds since 2019 without organizational approval, the board chair’s letter stated, and kept his involvement in them secret. He also put the funds in riskier investments than what the board would have approved.

When the funds lost money, Braun-Janzen covered up the losses by falsifying financial reports to conceal it from colleagues and the board — something he could do since he set up the organization’s financial system and managed it, the letter said.

An audit initiated by Abundance after his death confirmed the loss of the funds and also revealed Braun-Janzen had also been overstating earnings for other fundholders for years.

The audit concluded Braun-Janzen did not personally benefit from the misconduct. As a result, no criminal investigation was launched and no legal efforts were made to recover any funds from his family.

The lost funding was restored by Abundance to the six affected accounts, with the money coming from earnings and other internal sources of funding.

“While we know with certainty that Rick did not personally gain from his actions, the damage to those six funds remained the same,” the letter to donors said.

In response to the mismanagement, Abundance instituted governance and leadership changes and implemented a new financial system. That included appointing Alan Goddard, formerly the vice president of capacity building and programs at the Winnipeg Foundation, as its new CEO in May.

Goddard said the board acted quickly upon learning about the improprieties. At the time, Abundance believed the misconduct only involved the six funds but the audit revealed other issues, such as the misallocation of management fees.

While the holders of the six affected funds were informed right away, the organization waited until now to go public.

“We didn’t want to release information too quickly, only to learn there were more problems later,” Goddard said in an interview, adding that while service to donors slowed during this time, all donor capital remains intact.

The audit also indicated the lengths Braun-Janzen went to to conceal his actions.

“He was able to reconcile balances by moving numbers around — all the time he indicated to the board that everything was fine,” Goddard said, adding the organization placed “too much trust in one person.”

There was never any indication anything was amiss, Thompson told the Free Press.

“There were no alarm bells, nothing found by auditors to indicate a problem or that there were insufficient controls,” she said.

While a motive isn’t clear, Goddard said leaders at Abundance assume Braun-Janzen was trying to earn as much as he could for the funds.

Thompson speculates things began to unravel for Braun-Janzen near the end of the 2024 fiscal year, when he didn’t have enough money to cover the losses.

“He was trying to make it back up, but he was running out of time,” Thompson said.

The whole ordeal has been a shock for everyone, Goddard said.

“He had a phenomenal reputation in the organization and the entire gift planning sector. It was a blow to learn he had been involved in unauthorized trading,” he said.

Abundance leaders said they hope to move forward and are committed to do what is right for donors.

“One person did something wrong,” Goddard said. “The whole organization shouldn’t be painted in a negative light because of it. It has done so much good for donors and charities for over 50 years.”

In addition to Winnipeg, which is home to 12 staff members, Abundance employs 12 others in offices in Kitchener, Ont., Calgary and Abbotsford, B.C.

In 2024, it disbursed $55 million to more than 2,000 charities across Canada. There are 1,300 active funds that represent nearly $280 million in donations.

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